


False Memory

by Criccieth



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Episode: s02e05 Adam, F/M, M/M, Missing Scene, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23244826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Criccieth/pseuds/Criccieth
Summary: Adam has played with their memories, but Jack has very good reasons for knowing Ianto's confession cannot be true.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Toshiko Sato/Adam Smith
Comments: 83
Kudos: 152





	1. Tuesday, 6 am

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a really, really short piece. Honest. I had an idea for a short moment near the end of "Adam" which shed a somewhat different light on Jack's reaction. But when I tried to start writing it, this came out instead. I guess this proves that I really can't do short!
> 
> The way Jack and Ianto react to each other in this episode was so strange that I decided that Gwen wasn't the only one who actually lost memories to Adam's tricks. 
> 
> Missing moments from Adam. Second part almost ready, ast part well on it's way.
> 
> It's "Adam", so there's some nastiness. If you recognise the dialogue, it's from the episode and thus NOT mine.

Tuesday, 6am:

Jack is thankful that the Hub is quiet – he’s feeling oddly unsettled and out of sorts and really doesn’t want company.

“Jack.” The voice is so soft that he only just hears it and after everything else that’s happened tonight he whips round, breath catching. It takes a moment before he sees the speaker and when he does he breathes a sigh, half-relieved because it’s Ianto not…..someone else, and half-baffled because why is he still here this late at night? And that… **itches** at something in his mind, because isn’t Ianto normally here most nights? He has a momentary flash of memory – Ianto sitting opposite him in his office, and two glasses of whisky on the table and warmth between them. But no, that’s not right - it’s Adam he talks into the night with, isn’t it? He shakes off the strange memory lapse, moving forward with a smile for the youngest member of the team.

“Ianto.” It takes only a moment to realise that something certainly isn’t right. Ianto is sitting slumped at his desk, his eyes glazed.

“Hey – what’s wrong?” Jack asks. Ianto has been crying, he’s shocked to realise. There’s a very, very, short list of things that can bring Ianto Jones to tears and Lisa’s name is banned from everyone’s lips but Ianto’s so what can have done this?

“You have to put me in the vaults,” Ianto says and his voice isn’t just near the edge, it sounds like he’s already slipped over the edge and is hanging onto it by his fingernails. “Lock me up.” _What the HELL?_

“I killed three girls.” Ianto says. “Strangled them”. His voice is shaking and Jack is struggling to make sense of this because _what the ever-loving **fuck?**_ That – that just doesn’t even begin to make sense. Ianto looks and sounds like his mind is an inch from cracking and the idea of Ianto losing that battle is a terrifying one.

“Stop kidding around,” Jack says, but he can feel his pulse accelerating because Ianto would never joke about something like this.

“I’m serious,” Ianto says. His voice drops, and his tone is almost matter-of-fact, as though he’s giving a report. He’s still not looking at Jack, his gaze now fixed at some point on the far side of the Hub. “I murdered them, in cold blood.” And this is **not** his Ianto. Gwen forgetting Rhys and his own long-buried memories coming back, those he can put down to ‘it’s Torchwood.’ Not this. This is so wrong, it’s crazy. Wait – _‘his’ Ianto?_ When has there ever been anything between them that would make him think of Ianto as ‘his’?

“I took their bodies...” Ianto startles suddenly, surging to his feet so abruptly Jack takes a step back as Ianto looks frantically from one side to another, like he’s seeing something Jack can’t. There’s sheer terror on his face. The list of things that actually scare Ianto is even shorter than the list of things that bring him to tears. There’s never been a Dalek or a cannibal here and the only Cyberman that ever entered the Hub is long-gone, so this situation is so far beyond **wrong** that Jack can’t find the words to express it even in his own head.

“You have to lock me away,” Ianto gasps out. “Before I turn on you. None of you are safe!” He starts moving, clearly aiming for the stairs beyond Jack - the ones that lead to the vaults. Jack grabs his arm as he goes past, forcing him to stop.

“Hey! _Hey!_ ” Jack pulls him round so they’re face to face, grabs his other arm and tries to draw him closer but Ianto goes rigid, resisting. “Come here. Come _here._ ” He looks into Ianto’s face and there’s fear and despair in those blue-grey eyes and none of this makes **sense** _._ “What’s happened to you?” _What the hell is going on? Possessed? Drugged?_ He tightens his grip and without thinking about it pulls him into an embrace, using his greater strength to force compliance in a way he hasn’t done since what he always thinks of as That Night. He holds him close, one arm going around his back and the other coming up to cup the back of Ianto’s head. Despite the overwhelming **wrongness** of Ianto’s words, this feels quintessentially **right**. It’s as though he’s held him hundreds of times but how can that be? Their relationship is hard to define in some ways but it’s entirely professional, so why does holding him feel so familiar? He feels Ianto lift his head from Jack’s shoulder and the words he whispers into Jack’s ear make his blood run cold.

“I’m a monster.” Ianto’s head drops onto his shoulder, as though he has given up. _I’m a monster._ It’s a moment before Jack can even make his lips move.

“No.” He grips Ianto’s shoulder, pushing him back enough to look into his eyes. “No. We talked about this, we went through this.” They had. After That Night - when Ianto was so damaged, so shattered that Jack was at first not sure that a bullet might not actually be the kinder action. When Ianto called himself a monster beyond reprieve, beyond redemption, for what had happened to the pizza girl. _Annie, Annie! You fucking **bastard** , her name was **ANNIE** …._in his nightmares he can still hear Ianto screaming that at him after Jack admitted he had no idea who the girl was. When Ianto refused Retcon because forgetting was the coward’s way out. When Jack realised he was too much of a monster to give this beautiful, broken boy the relief of death or even to force Retcon on him. Because if he could tie that capacity for loyalty to him there was nothing he, or Torchwood, couldn’t do with it.

So once that night was over, and Ianto’s flat stripped of any and everything he could use to hurt himself, Jack had begun. Had pushed Ianto over and over again through every step of the way from the twentieth floor of the Tower to the room deep below the Hub. No threats, no violence, no torture. Just Jack gently, subtly, breaking him down until Ianto was putty in his hands. And then….

It had been easy, in some ways. Tell the others not to approach him during his suspension, so that ‘tempers can cool’. Keep him hemmed in by demanding instant response to phone-calls and texts and minimal warning of an impending arrival at his flat – supposedly for ‘security’ and Ianto’s own safety. In reality, it had been to isolate him. To be his only real source of human contact. Tell him that forgiveness was possible, redemption within his reach - with Jack’s help. Then slowly put him back together – rebuilding him to be what Jack needed, what he wanted. It paid off rapidly: it was Ianto, for example, who came up with the idea of saving Tosh time in blocking UNIT’s weekly hacking attempts by both looping various recordings from within the Hub and elsewhere to build fake conversations and by creating a fake server, complete with cases mocked up from various ancient Torchwood files. UNIT now think they have a reasonable success rate and the real stuff is left alone.

It was only later that he realised that everything has a price, including the loyalty he had so wanted. He had assumed that the loyalty and the love came separately, and that he could have the one for his use without the other being an issue. He was wrong. For Ianto, who never did anything by halves, love and loyalty were so intertwined that one demanded the other. That combination, given to Lisa Hallett, had conned the con-man; brought a Cyber-conversion unit and its victim into the Hub; hidden them and himself from the entire team for months on end and nearly ended the world. And then, somehow, it was all at Jack’s command.

It was heady at first. Exhilarating, to be the focus of that much passion, and he forgot how dangerous the man could be. Thoughtless, led only by the intoxication of meeting the 20th century man he’d secretly admired since he took the name, he’d disregarded how his actions appeared. He hadn’t spared a thought for the 21st century man whose loyalty he had so wanted and it took Owen being shot for Jack to realise that things might be out of his control, but by then it was too late. Even when he saw Tosh’s message to the team, sketching an image of a brief doomed romance, he hadn’t thought about how his actions might wound someone who valued loyalty and fidelity so much. Then Bilis had snatched at the chance he’d been given. And while Jack floundered around, lashing out at his own team because he had no clue how to fix things, his every word and action making things worse; Bilis used an old loyalty to break the strained new one.

He can still remember the shock of that calm, flat ‘No’ and the realisation that he’d lost all control over the situation. Standing now in the Hub, he feels a flicker of shame that it took endless time in the blackness of death to realise the extent of the damage he’d thoughtlessly inflicted. And it took the _Valiant_ for him to finally realise that he feels more for Ianto than merely lust and a possessive pride in his work.

Hard on the heel of that thought is that itch of puzzled memory. Lust? Well, perhaps – Ianto is more than merely easy on the eye, and Jack Harkness knows how to appreciate beauty. But he doesn’t mix business with pleasure. And it’s Adam that he turns to when he needs friendship from anyone in the team. He knows that – remembers many hours spent in conversation with Adam, sharing parts of himself. Yet he can also remember a TV flickering through a movie while he lies stretched out on a sofa that certainly isn’t in the Hub, Ianto next to him with his legs tangled with Jack’s own. Remembers dropping kisses onto that lovely mouth.….

He shakes his head, takes a breath. “Something’s…something’s wrong. Something’s…I don’t know. Got inside your head.” _And perhaps inside mine. What the hell is going on tonight?_ “Come on. I’ve got something that can help.” He turns them away from the vault, once more over-riding Ianto’s resistance, and moves them both into his office.

“Sit down – get comfortable.” He eases his grip and when Ianto doesn’t try to flee to the vaults, he lets go and turns to the safe. It only takes a moment or two to find the lie detector. It came through the Rift a few weeks ago, and he’d recognised it from a mission to 35th century Earth for the Agency; a mission they undertook after the end of the time loop, shortly before he woke up with a two-year hole in his memory. As it’s harmless and highly useful, he’s kept it up here and they’ve been too busy for him to get around to getting it logged into the Archives.

Ianto has taken off his jacket and is sitting in the chair on the other side of the table, hands wrapped around the end of the arm-rests and his sleeves rolled up. Jack stops in his tracks as he realises that Ianto is clearly expecting to be drugged – and yet is looking at him with a level of trust that he has no idea when or even how he earned. He puts the lie detector down the table and runs through the settings for a human male then takes a deep breath, looking up.

“I need you to give me some details. In your own words,” he says reluctantly.

Ianto’s jaw is clenched in the way it does when he’s working at them _not_ having a blazing row. Jack gestures at the lie detector.

“Best lie detector on the planet. If something’s untrue, the light turns red.” He turns it on. “Go.” There’s a brief pause, then:-

“My… hands on her throat.” Ianto’s voice is strained, as though he doesn’t want to hear his own words. Then something seems to shift and his voice changes, becoming softer, and there’s a light in his eyes that makes Jack’s skin prickle uncomfortably. His next words fill Jack with a sick dread.

“And it felt so good.” He snatches in a breath and Jack knows that sound, knows the way he breathes as he starts to get turned on. _Ianto? Oh my god, Ianto…._ “Squeezing the life out of her.” His accent is rougher, like when Jack is getting him closer and closer to orgasm and the light is staying green. The light is staying green. _No. NO._ He looks down at the data streaming across the display. _This isn’t possible. This isn’t him._

“It reads as truth!” Ianto’s voice has changed again - there’s horror now, and desperation and a guilt that tears at Jack’s heart. Jack looks up. Ianto’s sweating heavily, tears in his eyes and this cannot be happening.

“I don’t believe it,” Jack says, his voice as firm as he can make it. _This isn’t true, this isn’t him._ “Okay, tell me about the second girl.” There’s a moment’s silence, broken by a sob from Ianto.

“She tried to get away,” he says, and for that one moment he sounds very young, very shaken and very miserable and a tear glints in the dim light. And then from one breath to the next, he changes.

“But I was too quick,” and there’s an unholy glee in his eyes and a dreadful pride in his voice and Jack would be happy to **never** see that particular faint smile on his face again.

“Pleading,” and the word is drawn out and his breathing shifts again, the accent roughening and Jack’s blood is running cold. Then he takes in a ragged sobbing breath and his voice changes once more, cracking with pain and guilt. “And…and I didn’t care.” His voice breaks on the last word, and he’s clearly fighting not to break down. His gaze goes to Jack and there’s horror in his eyes and his voice.

“Something in me wants to kill!”

They sit, staring at each other over the green light.

“No,” Jack says flatly. “This is not you.” He reaches out and shuts the lie detector off, because it’s useless to them. He stands up, walking around the desk. “Something’s changed you. You’re not a murderer.” He squeezes Ianto’s shoulder, trying to show how firmly he believes his own words. “I’m certain of it.” He moves to the door, trying to think of their next move. Then he turns his head to look back at the other man as something occurs to him.

“Why tonight?”

“W..what?” Ianto says, voice shaking.

“Why did you tell me this tonight?” He moves back to stand in front of Ianto, forcing the next question out. “Did you think you were going to.. try and….” His voice fails him because he cannot, _will not_ finish that question. They both know what he means though. Ianto stares up at him wide-eyed and Jack can almost see the cogs turning in his head as he tries to think clearly.

“N.. I…I don’t know. I just….” He blinks and now there’s something other than either horror or (thank god) delight in his voice:- there’s puzzlement and a Torchwood-bred note of caution. “I knew it had happened. Knew I wasn’t safe to… go out. I knew I could trust you to…” His eyes go bleak for a moment. Lisa and That Night are not mentioned now; but they are always there, hovering on the edges of whatever-this-is between them. They always will be. “To do what was necessary.”

Jack frowns, one thumb scratching down his jaw. Again, he doesn’t understand where the trust Ianto has in him comes from. What has he done to deserve it?

“But – we were together before I went on the weevil hunt. You were fine then – weren’t you?”

Ianto nods slowly, hesitantly. “Yes? I… I don’t….”

They look at each other again.

“What did you do, after I dropped you off?”

“We…” Ianto closes his eyes for a moment, then they snap open fast enough that Jack knows he’s seeing things he doesn’t like behind his eyelids. “Coffee,” Ianto says firmly. “I made coffee. Four coffees. Then…Owen and Tosh and I were in the conference room, talking about that weird box that came through. Tosh said it didn’t make sense, it’s made of wood but it’s got low level meson energy. She said….” He frowns, looks at Jack. “That box - you brought it in, didn’t you?”

Jack frowns, trying to think. “I… might have. I… I don’t know.”

“I thought you’d brought it in, but Tosh thought Adam brought it in from an excavation a few months ago. So… I said I’d look in my diary.” His breathing is changing again, becoming agitated and he’s starting to shift in the chair, sweat beading his face again. “I… went to get it, and….” He swallows hard, looks at Jack. “I don’t remember,” he whispers and there’s sudden fear in his eyes and Jack feels a flicker of it himself, because Ianto’s memory is one of the few reliable things about this whole place, this whole life.

“Why don’t I….?” Ianto remembers everything. He can, Jack knows with grim certainty, remember the expression on the face of the thing calling itself Lisa seconds before the rest of the team ended it all. Tosh might have deleted all trace of that night from the CCTV but Ianto is a more-than-passable artist and Jack saw the drawings, before Ianto burnt them.

“CCTV!”

“What, for the box?”

“No.” He beckons and Ianto joins him as they move from the office down to the Hub floor. “To find out what happened after you came back here tonight.” Half-way down the stairs, a question occurs to Jack and he stops and turns to look at Ianto.

“Why four coffees?”

“What?”

“You said you made four coffees? Why?” He’s not sure himself why that fact is crawling through his brain but there’s something…. important about it.

Ianto stares. “Owen, Tosh, me, Adam.”

“But – Adam was with me. On the weevil hunt.”

“He was here,” Ianto states. “I brought Gwen back to her place, then I told you about the weevil alert. You dropped me here and went off by yourself, remember?”

Jack blinks. _Remember_. Why does that word… But… _that can’t be right_ … “No, Adam was with m.…” Yet… _‘I could come with you. It’s been a while since we went hunting together’._ Ianto’s voice. And it has – they haven’t been ‘hunting’ together for a while, because Adam comes hunting with him now. So Adam must have come with him tonight. Yes, yes of course he did. Because after the Weevil got away, he started telling Adam about… about Grey. But…..he can remember driving the SUV up onto the edge of the Plass. He can remember Ianto slipping out of the car and crossing to the lift. Why can’t he remember Adam getting into the car? And why does ‘hunting’ seem to mean two different things depending on whether he’s thinking of Adam or Ianto?

Then another set of questions are suddenly there, as though part of his mind has just reviewed the last few minutes. Since when did he and Ianto have blazing rows? How does he know what Ianto sounds like when he’s turned on? How his voice changes as he gets close to coming? Why does he know he could list a dozen ways to turn Ianto on, and none of them would involve pain or violence at all; still less what Ianto has described? How does he know **any** of this? Gwen has Rhys, Adam has Tosh, Owen… well, Owen has no-one but that’s because he only has eyes for Tosh. When Jack wants sex, he goes to the clubs or the hookers or rent-boys. He knows he does, he can remember doing it. _Remember._ What Ianto does for sex he has no idea – hell, he’s not even sure if Ianto goes only for women or likes both - but he knows, he _knows,_ it has never involved strangling innocent women to death.

They stand and look at each other for a moment; both aware that something is very, _very_ wrong tonight. Jack turns and hurries down the stairs and then over to the CCTV monitoring system. If something is screwing with them all, if something messed with Ianto tonight, then there should be some sign on the CCTV; even if it’s by virtue of it having been wiped. If he can’t find anything, he’ll get Ianto to look – not even Tosh can wipe the CCTV well enough to hide the fact from Ianto - but something is telling him to look for himself first. He can also settle for his own peace of mind just when Adam left the Hub this evening. If the Hub cameras are entirely clean, then he’ll have to find out just when Ianto thinks he did… whatever he thinks he did _(but he didn’t do it. That’ s not him)_ and study all the CCTV he can get his hands on for that time-frame. To get the proof that Ianto is… mistaken. Deep in the back of his mind, he knows that if it should turn out that something - alien or otherwise - has caused Ianto to **actually** do what he is claiming, then Jack will bury the evidence too deep to ever be found before deciding how he’s going to keep Ianto in his life – and keep others safe from him.

He starts with his own entry into the Hub and works backward from there, skimming back through the recording on high speed. Watches Ianto sit at his desk for hours on end, twitching and shaking intermittently. Watches him hiding his face in his hands, sobbing as he rocks backwards and forwards. Watches him grip the desk, turning his head and looking from one side to other, and even in the CCTV image Jack can tell his jaw is set and Jack does not want to know what was going through Ianto’s mind in those moments. Watches Ianto visibly struggle to stop himself from leaving the Hub. For **six hours,** alone.

Owen left just before midnight, walking out through the main door without spotting the figure huddled on the floor feet from the break area. Tosh and Adam left shortly before that. Adam caught Tosh up from her work station in a rush of laughter and arms wrapping about her before sweeping her out through the cog-door, neither of them seeming to notice Ianto.

 _Adam? When did Adam get back to the Hub?_ He frowns, trying to remember when he last saw the man. They were standing on the basket-ball court. He told Adam about Grey. Then.... then he walked away, took the SUV and the next thing he remembers, he was climbing the access stairs to one of his usual roofs. _You're good on roofs...._ Ianto's voice, with a teasing note in it. But where was Adam? Surely he wouldn't have left him to just walk back to the Hub? And why would Ianto say that to him? 

Adam. He tracks Adam back. And finds his proof. Finds the images of Ianto, huddled on the Hub floor and sobbing. Adam holding Ianto, nothing of friendship or love in that mockery of an embrace. Adam forcing a kiss onto Ianto, Ianto pleading, Adam exultant. He goes further back….until he sees Adam appear out of nowhere, sitting next to Ianto on the sofa. He watches Ianto stumble away, sees Adam rise, then grab Ianto and shove him back into the wall. Watches, and listens.

 _Remember._ He calls up any and every image of Adam, from tonight and earlier. Tosh, Gwen, himself - and Adam. Adam smiling and touching and that word – remember, remember, _remember,_ **remember,** **_remember_** _._ And now he thinks back to earlier tonight. Coming back up from the sewers and Adam being there and… _remember._

He turns from the screens. Ianto is slumped at the foot of the stairs they came down, his gaze fixed on Jack as though Jack is his lifeline. He looks exhausted. Jack crosses to him.

“Here,” he says, taking his arm and starting to pull him to his feet.

“No,” Ianto tries to pull away. There’s a note of pleading in his voice, as though he dreads whatever he thinks Jack is about to show him.

“Come here,” Jack says gently. He pulls Ianto with him, ignoring the reluctance in every line of Ianto’s body. “Come here, just look.” He stands behind him, supporting him and points over Ianto’s shoulder to the screen that shows Adam’s attack on Ianto. “Look!”

They both watch as on the screen Adam has one hand on Ianto’s head, the ugly words pouring from him as Ianto screams and tries to resist. Jack keeps one hand on Ianto’s arm, the other running up and down his shoulder, trying to ground him, to reassure him.

When they have seen it all, Jack turns Ianto to face him and wraps him in an embrace. The whole of Ianto’s body shudders, his hands fisting in Jack’s shirt and Jack can feel hot tears against his neck. He’s shaking as well, shock and anger and disgust coursing through him. Adam violated Ianto’s mind not his body, but the only word that fits is ‘rape’ and Jack wonders how he can recover from this; how they can defeat Adam.

Even now, Jack’s memories are telling him that Adam is his confidante, his closest friend. The one he trusts above all others, the one he always turns to. And yet those memories are splitting, tearing and fragmenting under the horror of what he’s just seen. Other memories are emerging. Memories of Ianto. In his life, in his bed. In his heart. Memories that are suffused with the warmth that is missing from the memories of Adam. Memories…. _Memories. That’s the key._

“We’re going to fix this,” he whispers into Ianto’s ear. “I promise.” He waits until Ianto nods and straightens in his arms, then gently puts the other man a little way from him. Ianto, still shaking, starts to fumble at his shirt pocket. Jack gently bats his hand away and pulls the handkerchief out himself. Ianto takes it, wiping sweat and tears from his face as Jack then dips into his own trouser pocket and pulls out the packet of tissues to hand one over. Ianto deals with any number of deeply unpleasant things in his job as their clean-up specialist without batting an eyelid, yet it’s touching used handkerchiefs that makes him heave. Go figure.

“We need proof,” Jack says, watching Ianto start to rebuild his surface calm. “We need to separate him from the others, if need be, while we find it.”

“We need to figure out how long he’s been here,” Ianto says, and Jack can tell he is forcing himself to sound calm.

“We need to get rid of him. Permanently,” Jack says. “Now, if he plants himself in our memories, tampers with them in order to exist….”

“Then getting him out of our memories should get rid of him.”

Jack grins. “Clever **and** gorgeous,” he says, and reaches out to gently pulls Ianto closer and press a kiss to his forehead. Ianto catches his breath and then his own hands come up cup Jack’s face and suddenly they are kissing and for a moment all they are aware of is each other.

Eventually, Ianto draws back for air and they stare at each other for a long moment. They both know that, despite no memory of a previous time, this is not their first kiss.

He forces out a shaky smile. “Alright. Duty calls.”

They trawl through the CCTV first. Two days. That’s all he’s been here for. They watch as Tosh’s station flashes up the Rift alert in the early hours of Sunday morning. And now they can both remember what happened.


	2. Sunday morning, 2 a.m.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Rift alert brings something into the Hub, and memories are changed.

Sunday 2am:

“Oh God, no….” Ianto groaned as he rolled over, burying his face in the thin pillow. They hadn’t even got into the small bed until just after midnight, had not got any sleep til a while later and now the Rift alert was buzzing from both their phones. Jack hauled himself up from stomach to knees and reached over Ianto’s bare shoulders to scoop up his phone even as Ianto batted at his own, trying to turn off the alert without opening his eyes. Jack laughed softly, brushing a kiss against warm skin as he read the details to himself.

“No life-signs. And it doesn’t look as if it can be that big.” He dropped another kiss onto Ianto’s back, enjoying the low hum of pleasure he got as a reward. “I’ll go. You stay. Get some more sleep.” He slung one leg over Ianto and for a moment straddled his hips, leaning down to kiss the back of his neck.

“Keep the bed nice and warm for me?” he whispered and watched the corner of Ianto’s mouth curl up in a smile. The younger man hadn’t even opened his eyes.

“’Kay….” Ianto muttered and for a moment Jack thought he’d already fallen back asleep. Then the hips under Jack shifted just _slightly_ up against him and Jack huffed out a laugh and slid off Ianto to stand on the floor. He gave Ianto’s arse a quick pat in passing.

“Cheeky,” he said as he pulled the blanket up to cover Ianto to his shoulders.

“That’s what you love about me,” Ianto mumbled and Jack couldn’t resist:- he leant forward once more and kissed the edge of that wonderful mouth.

“Not just that, I promise.”

He spent a few moments trying to find his own clothes from amidst the jumble on the floor. Ianto shifted as though to get up and help and Jack put one hand on his shoulder to push him gently back onto the mattress.

“Sleep. That’s an order.”

“Yes, **sir** ,” Ianto mumbled, that thread of mischief in his voice and Jack stopped for a moment, tempted to just say ‘sod it’ because oh, the things that could happen when Ianto used that word in bed… but he picked up his trousers and decided not to bother with trying to remember where his boxers had ended up. He pulled on his shirt, ruffled Ianto’s hair (earning himself a displeased grunt) and climbed up into his office. He lifted his coat from the stand and swung it over his shoulders. It might be May already, but this was Cardiff, and it didn’t take a look at the weather-monitoring station to tell him it was chilly out.

He took the underground tunnels to the garage and five minutes after leaving his warm bed (and hot bed-mate) he was swinging the SUV onto the A4232, rounding the Bay. The roads were almost empty at this time of night and even obeying traffic laws, it only took fifteen minutes to reach his destination – the leisure centre and playing fields sandwiched between Newport Road and Llanrumney Avenue. He bit back a smile, wondering how much he could have mangled the latter name if Ianto had been in the car to glare at him for it. He enjoyed pretending he could only speak or understand the bare minimum of Welsh – for a start it meant he was able to gauge just how pissed off Ianto was with Jack, Owen, the Rift or the world in general by comparing what he claimed to have just said with what he’d actually said. For someone who didn’t describe himself as fluent, Ianto knew a surprising number of swear-words and insults.

The Rift surge was slight enough that even Tosh’s third-generation Rift activity locator can’t pin it down any closer than the southern end of the playing fields. Which left him with an area nearly three times the size of a rugby pitch to cover. Alone, with a single torch, in the pouring rain. Not something he’d rate as ‘fun’. The thought of Ianto in his bed was extremely appealing but he made himself quarter the ground and after almost twenty minutes work he found it. Just a box, in the end. Oddly patterned and heavy, but just a box.

He made straight for the SUV, making a mental note to apologise to Ianto for the amount of mud and grass he was treading into it but not really wanting to stand in the cold rain trying to clean his boots first. He headed straight back and when he got into his office, he dumped the box on his desk before carefully putting his coat on the stand. He’d been well-trained when it came to putting the coat where it belonged. Then he hurried back down the ladder. He didn’t say a word, he didn’t have to – Ianto, eyes closed, shifted sideways to make room for Jack even as he started to strip off, dumping his clothes without a care for where they fell. The coat might have protected him from the worst of the rain, and the car’s heater had dispelled the cold, but he had another very good reason for wanting back in his bed as quickly as possible.

“Mmm. Kept the bed warm,” Ianto’s voice was so slurred with sleep that despite having spent the entire journey back thinking about what he might do, Jack climbed into the bed with every intention of just curling around the other man and closing his own eyes. Ianto, it transpired, had other ideas because as soon as Jack slipped under the blankets he rolled onto his side to press his warm back to Jack’s chest and his equally warm arse against Jack’s groin. His eyes were still closed, his breathing almost unchanged from the deep, slow rhythm of sleep.

There is no one way they fuck. No one way they have sex. No one way they make love, but this way is one of Jack’s favourites. The first time Ianto had done this Jack had lain there, blood rushing south while his other brain was pointing out that he couldn’t just assume consent – not when it was only two weeks since Ianto had come into his office with the stop-watch smoothly ticking and certainly not when Ianto wasn’t fully awake. Then Ianto had shifted further back against him and mumbled sleepily: _you goin’ to use that, or just tease me with it?_ and that was all the permission Jack’s libido needed. _Both_ he’d answered, and that had earned him a hand snaking back to grab his thigh and pull him closer still.

So now he kissed up Ianto’s jaw and ran one hand down the warm, pliant, drowsy form to bend his knee and move his leg just _so_ and his other hand reached up to the space between the top of the mattress and the wall, where Ianto had left the small bottle earlier that night. No need for anything else - Ianto had stopped insisting on condoms the night before Tommy went back. If there was anything Jack was determined about, it was to not abuse a level of trust that had taken his breath away. A few moments later, as he ran one hand down Ianto’s ribs to glide forward and down and slid the other over the firm arse so invitingly close to his cock, he felt the other man stir and then shift to give Jack easier access.

“Cold hands,” Ianto mumbled, then gave a low groan of pleasure at the slow introduction of something far warmer.

Up above them, unseen by anyone that night but clear on the CCTV as they watch the image of an empty office two days later, the box that Jack had set down on the edge of the latest pile of paperwork slipped. It dropped the two inches onto the table with a soft _thump_ that no-one noticed, and a tiny piece of the inlaid design moved. And a moment later a man stood motionless in the shadowy corner of Jack’s office.

Just before six that Sunday morning Jack climbed up into the office, dressed and ready for the day. The man stepped silently from the shadows behind him and reached out and put a hand on Jack’s shoulder, smiling as he spoke about a late call and a few hours kip on the battered sofa. _Remember_.

“Adam! Thanks for taking that call – I owe you one.”

Adam smiled. “No worries, Jack. You can always rely on me, remember?”

At half-six, Ianto – showered, shaved and suited - climbed up into the office and made for the kitchen. Two steps out of the office he stopped dead, staring at the man standing next to Jack. One hand moved towards an inside pocket, trained reflexes kicking in at a possible threat. He cursed himself for the absence of the stun-gun but who would expect to need it, here inside the Hub?

“Jack?” He took a step back, eyes going from the stranger to his lover. “Who’s this? What’s he doing here?” Jack gave him a grin and as Ianto stared at him, bemused, the stranger stepped close enough to throw an arm over Ianto’s shoulder and asked if Ianto could give him a moment to finish talking to Jack alone like he did first thing every day. _Remember._

He smiled, relaxed and cheerful. “Of course. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thanks, mate. Don’t forget to bring up some coffee like always – remember?”

Half an hour later, Owen arrived, trudging through the cog-door in jeans and a T-shirt that had clearly been picked up from his or someone’s bedroom floor that morning. By now, Jack and Adam were deep in conversation down on the Hub floor and Ianto was in the kitchen wondering why he didn’t seem to have had breakfast before coming in that morning.

Owen stopped in his tracks and stared at the two men sitting at Gwen’s work station. Later, watching on the CCTV, Ianto will wonder if perhaps Adam has some sort of other ability to influence them. Because Owen will seem merely puzzled as Adam moves forward with one hand extended and a joke about Owen working so hard he forgot to change clothes. In the blink of an eye it was too late. _Remember._

“Hey,” Jack said. “Early start for once? Or are you turning over a new leaf?”

Adam grinned, one hand on each of their shoulders. “Ah come on Jack – Owen’s only been late once this week, remember?”

“Umm…yeah,” Owen said and he gave a hesitant smile. “There’s…um… that female Keldora down in the cells. I gave her the…um… appetite suppressant yesterday and I need a…umm... a morning sample to make sure it…ah…. took.”

Later, one part of Ianto’s memories will insist that what feels wrong about the scene playing out on the CCTV is that Owen isn’t wearing his glasses and his clothes are slept in. Another part will insist that Owen always wears contacts and that what feels wrong is that Jack doesn’t made a crack about alien ‘appetites’ and Owen doesn’t respond with a snide comment about home-pregnancy tests and Jack’s sex habits.

That morning, Owen headed down to the cells and a short time later Ianto’s comm buzzed.

“Ianto, the…er… the Keldora’s sorted – her arm fins have turned blue. She’ll be safe to release into the Bay if you can….ermmm… sort that out later today? Perhaps?”

Ianto sighed inwardly, shaking his head. You’d think a doctor with several years A&E experience would be a bit more forceful, really.

“No problem, Owen. I’ll get to it soon as possible.”

“Thank you.”

It was almost thirty minutes before Owen re-emerged into the main part of the Hub. He had showered, shaved and was wearing black trousers and a dark cardigan over a clean long-sleeved top, his hair combed and glasses in place. For a moment, Ianto thought it seemed strange because… but Adam said that the new glasses suited him and called for a group hug and they remembered that Owen’s contacts had irritated his eyes.

Tosh was the last in, striding eagerly towards her workstation and shouting a greeting up to the office where Jack had gone to deal with the week’s paperwork. She made for her work station but three steps away she stopped dead and stared.

“Wait – who’s… when did Jack recruit someone new?” Her eyes widened in alarm. “You’re not UNIT are you?”

She looked towards Owen, just emerging from the autopsy pit with a question for Adam. He gave her a tentative smile.

“UNIT? Why would you think Adam would have anything to do with UNIT?”

She stared at him, then turned her head to look at Ianto, who had been about to put the latest files down on Adam’s workstation.

“Someone new?” Ianto frowned, looking from Tosh to Owen to Adam, bewildered. Adam stood up and walked towards Tosh, who backed away a step, one hand darting into her handbag. He closed with her in one long pace, extended both hands and placed them on her shoulders with a smiling question about the scan she helped him set up the day before. _Remember._

She frowned up at him for a moment and then her expression changed into a smile of recognition.

“We always get the best results when you and I team up, Tosh - remember?”


	3. Tuesday morning, 7 a.m.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evidence, and action.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, this got a little longer than I planned (did I say I can't do short pieces?) and I decided to break the last part into two. The first chunk is here, the second is almost done. Apologies for the delay - lockdown with 4 kids makes writing a bit tricky!
> 
> Once again - if you recognise dialogue, it's from the episode itself and therefore NOT mine.

Tuesday 7 a.m.

Standing in the night-dim Hub and watching Tosh on the CCTV smiling at Adam, Ianto shudders one hand raking through his hair as his breath comes in great rasps. _Remember._

“Easy,” Jack says. His arm is still about Ianto’s shoulders and now his hand comes up and his fingers brush the side of Ianto’s jaw, gentle as his voice. “Take it easy.”

Watching the screen Ianto realises that unlike Owen, Tosh arrived in the same clothes he remembers her wearing that day. The change is in her body language, in the way she stands and moves. She straightens her shoulders, lifts her head and as she sits down she slides the black cardigan from her shoulders. Later, she undoes the top two buttons on the blouse. He feels a flicker of guilt, because Tosh’s self-confidence has seemed so natural over these last two days and he wonders if any of it will survive the removal of Adam. Are they about to do the right thing?

Then he remembers Adam’s threat - _cross me and I will fill you full of fake memories until your head is on fire, because that is how I exist_ and he remembers the last words he heard before he was left on the Hub floor, remembering ( _seeing, God help me, seeing…no. No, I didn’t do that)_ a rain-soaked alley and a dead girl. _I forgot what a rush it is, feeding in the bad stuff._ And the sheer delight in Adam’s voice.

He is not the first Adam has attacked like this. And with that, he recalls that they have all known that today is Adam and Tosh’s anniversary and he wonders just when his memories were changed to tell him that. Today? Or yesterday? Nausea curls inside him, because he is suddenly certain where Adam is at this very moment. _Another exclusive club, Tosh_ he thinks with a surge of bitterness. _Just the two members again._ His mind, her body – violated by someone they thought of as a friend. Jack has just told him he isn’t a murderer but if Adam was in front of him right now.… his hands flex and then the horror and fear hit him again and he stumbles back, dropping into the chair and burying his face in his hands. He can remember the rain and the way her footsteps echoed off the metal rolldown door as she ran for her life and the fear in her eyes and the suppleness of the leather gloves over his hands and the feel of her lips when he put his finger to them and the way it felt when she begged and…. _I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that, I didn’t do that, I…._

“Hey!” Jack’s voice, Jack’s hands on his and now Jack pulls his hands from his face and one of Jack’s hands is under his jaw, lifting his head so he has to look into the other’s eyes.

“He put those memories in your head, Ianto. That is not you. I _know_ that.” Jack straightens, pulling Ianto to his feet. “Evidence. Evidence he can’t have changed…..” Jack looks around for a moment and then snaps his fingers.

“Blood samples!” He makes for the autopsy area and Ianto manages to force his legs to move, to follow Jack because it’s what he does. But at the top of the stairs he grabs hold of the bannister and sinks down to sit on the top step, because if he doesn’t then he’s going to fall over.

Jack yanks open the fridge, extracting the rack of vials. A blood sample from each of them, 25ml every thirty-six hours as per regulations. Tested to make sure they are none of them under any sort of external influence from drugs and to ensure there’s always a baseline to test emergency samples against. Each sample ID’d and dated, kept for nine days. He lifts the rack, spinning it and looking at the names and dates as they pass his eye.

Two days ago: Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper, Ianto Jones.

Five days ago: Gwen Cooper, Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato.

Eight days ago: Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato, Gwen Cooper, Jack Harkness….and one that has got turned around so he can’t see the name. He lifts it, reads the tiny label. Ianto Jones. His heart is pounding in his ears. He looks up.

“Where’s Adam’s blood sample?”

Even as he returns his attention to the rack to double-check, from the corner of his eye he sees Ianto’s head roll rather than turn towards the work-stations, the way he only moves when he’s exhausted. Then Ianto climbs to his feet and heads for the nearest computer.

There is no vial labelled ‘Adam Smith’, yet there is no reason that Jack’s memories will give him that there shouldn’t be. He feels cold inside, because if Ianto hadn’t read his diary or if in his fear and horror he hadn’t turned to Jack for help then in a few hours they would all have come trooping down here to give the latest sample. And then no doubt when Owen queried the absence of a previous sample from Adam, the intruder would have smiled and touched and _remember?_ And then there would have been a sixth vial here, and this proof would be useless. He shoves the rack back in the fridge and takes the short flight of stairs in two strides.

“Everything’s in order here.” Ianto has Adam’s personnel file on-screen by the time Jack reaches the chair, even though technically he doesn’t have the passwords to access it. Jack has an unsettling sensation in his head as one set of memories tell him that Ianto has never had the passwords to that kind of information and how has he accessed it and does this mean he’s hiding something else? While at the same time he has a memory of a smirk and a quiet, deep voice saying _I know everything_ and he is not at all surprised that Ianto would know his passwords because Ianto takes so much of the mundane work off his hands. He shoves both memories away, whichever one is the truth will still be there later, and steps up behind the desk-chair.

“When was it last updated?”

“Umm….” Ianto calls up the log and tenses. “Twenty-four hours ago.”

With a suddenness that startles them both, the main lights come up as the computers automatically kick over to day-time. It’s half-seven. A moment later, they hear the cog-door. Someone else has entered the Hub.

They move, acting without the need to talk. Ianto kills the link to the staff files even as he stands up and turns away from the screen, while Jack snatches up a book lying close to hand and opens it at random. They both turn towards the sound of the cog-door rolling open and foot-steps approaching and Jack notices Ianto shoving his hands into his pockets to hide their shaking. They see the flowers before they see Owen. There’s a frozen moment as they all look at each other and Jack feels again that jarring sensation of two sets of memories. Part of him knows that Owen is always here early, dedicated to his job and taking everything seriously. And part of him knows that Owen is only ever here before nine if there’s an alert or when he’s spent the night in someone else’s bed. Ironically, both parts of his mind are wondering why Owen has a massive bunch of flowers in his hands and it seems that Ianto is wondering the same thing because he turns to stare at Jack for a moment. Then they hear the cog door start to roll open again and two sets of footsteps and all three scatter and Jack has a nagging memory of alarms, the cog-door sounding an alarm.

Owen puts the flowers onto Tosh’s station and turns away as Ianto walks past him and up the spiral stairway, away from Adam. Jack hesitates, wondering whether they can bring Owen to their side, convince him of what they both now know. Then Owen moves past him, pulling off his jacket as he heads towards the autopsy bay, and they can hear Adam and Tosh and the opportunity is lost.

Jack and Ianto watch, the one from just outside his office and the other from the catwalk, as Tosh sees the flowers and a delighted smile comes over her face. She throws a glance to Adam, clearly wondering if her lover has done this as a surprise but Adam shrugs. As she leans over the gift, Owen comes cautiously back up from his own area.

They watch as Owen fumbles his painful way through an apology for something that neither of them has a memory of. They exchange quick glances both wondering if this is something that really happened - something that Adam has wiped from their memory, or something they simply didn’t witness. Perhaps it’s even something Adam has placed into Tosh and Owen’s memory. However Adam’s memory-modifications have changed them, whatever they will all be like with him gone, they both know this threat is as real as anything Torchwood has ever dealt with. _Memories define us,_ Jack thinks. _We have to remove his, to know what’s real and who we really are_.

Adam is watching Owen and Tosh and the sneer on his face sends a shudder down Ianto’s spine because he saw that expression earlier, when he was trying to stop Adam. Just before the alley, and Adam’s arm around his neck and Adam waving his diary. And _Adam and he, moving down the alley with the girl’s body and…. **NO!** I didn’t do that. That’s not real._ He walks along the upper gantry, past the dragon in flight, tugging his sleeves down and securing his cuffs. He watches Adam, but with every step he’s aware of Jack’s presence down below. He could close his eyes and point straight to Jack, the rock that just saved his sanity. He’d expected to be in the vaults, locked away. Expected Jack to be looming above him, threatening and snarling. Demanding to know what he had done this time. Who he had killed. Where the bodies were. Instead, Jack had offered security and safety and ‘ _this isn’t you’_.

It had taken every shred of self-control, every last gasp of the determination that had brought them from Canary Wharf and kept Lisa a secret for months to stay at that desk last night. To sit and wait for Jack. Sit and wait for the chance to confess. Sit and wait for Jack’s verdict and sentence. To _not_ go out, to not go….. _roaming the streets at night, looking for bait._ He’d waited, and Jack had saved him – and whichever poor random girl might have crossed his path.

The cog doors open again and Gwen comes round the entry-way into the main Hub. She looks almost as strained as Ianto feels and who can blame her? Rhys is a thoroughly decent man – Ianto likes him far more than he likes Johnny - and he would have taken good care of her last night, but for Gwen it must still have felt at first like being abandoned with a stranger. He watches, aware of Jack watching, as Tosh smiles a greeting.

“Hey – how are you today?”

“Things are coming back, slowly,” Gwen says. Adam starts to get up, smiling, as she comments that Rhys didn’t want her to come in. Ianto watches him, sickened. Is he going to take more of her memories? What is his plan – to remove all their recollections of that strange night when Gwen Cooper forgot her fiancé? Does he now assume that he can control Ianto because of what he has forced Ianto to believe is their shared secret? _I help you dump the bodies, it’s me you call._ And the memory surges up, vivid and real as the memory of sitting in Jack’s office not an hour ago and telling him of the murders: the memory of ringing Adam’s number, of his own voice. _Adam, I’ve done it again_ and laughing softly. Adam’s calm reply, asking where he is, telling him where to wait. Adam helping him roll the body into a piece of carpet. The weight of it, sodden with rain and her, as they lift it and dump it into a metal container. Adam’s hand on his shoulder _come on, you look like you need a drink mate_ and grinning at him in reply because yeah, he’s built up a thirst and…

And Jack’s voice, firm and calm and ‘ _this isn’t you’_. Jack knows him. Knows what he’s capable of and Jack has saved him. Again.

Standing at the top of the spiral stairs he watches as Adam moves towards Gwen, grinning and talking about ‘looking after her’ and holding out both arms.

“Come on, group hug!” The two women step happily into his embrace and Owen, who had been watching them with concern, comes forward eagerly to join the embrace and there are more memories in Ianto’s mind – of _‘group hug!’_ and the six of them standing together in a warm circle, arms about each other.

But Jack’s eyes are on him and the memory stutters and crumbles and he can remember Jack’s hand on his shoulder as they watched the CCTV, and the feeling of complete **safety** when Jack had pulled him into an embrace after his confession. And another memory, re-gained since that embrace – of Sunday night, curled around each other in the small bed below Jack’s office and then Jack’s warmth behind him, around him. Jack’s hands dragging down his ribs, Jack’s cock oh-so-slowly sliding inside him, filling him….. _That_ is real. He’s not sure how or why it’s real but he knows it is and when they have rid themselves of Adam and Adam’s memories he wonders what else will resurface. 

He cannot be close to the others right now. He cannot be near this…. creature. Jack is standing, watching them and at this moment all Ianto wants is Jack’s presence beside him and he purposefully avoids the group standing at the foot of the stairs, twisting his body to move past without touching. And once more there is that juddering double-memory – of group hugs and friendship and Adam being what holds them all together. But also memories of standing in the shadows, of watching the others laugh and talk and joke and touch and knowing that they are not registering his absence, that he does not count. Memories of Jack leading the others out of the Hub - _‘team meal! Ianto, mind the shop!’_. Memories of the hail of bullets that finally destroyed his world, destroyed all that was left of Lisa. Memories as real as those from when Lisa was fully herself, when she was well. And although his memories of her end in blood and horror and grief and guilt, he will not let Adam take them to help himself hide within the team - nor allow him to wipe them out while forcing others in.

He hears Adam behind him.

“Hey, Ianto, come here,” and fuck, the bastard’s words sound so _normal_. He stops in his tracks. In the days of Lisa and a Cyber-conversion unit he so often forced himself to pretend all was well that it is still second nature to him and so he turns around, thinking to pretend everything is as it should be. Adam has slid the jacket from his shoulders and holds it in his hand and there’s a concerned frown on his face.

“You all right, mate?” Adam asks and it would have been convincing if he hadn’t seen the footage of himself, cowering on the floor as this creature ripped into his mind. And fuck, Adam is reaching out for him and he will never let this thing touch him again and he jerks his shoulder out of reach before he has had time to think.

Anger flashes in Adam’s face and he stares straight into Ianto’s eyes. There’s a faint sneer on his face and then:-

“Listen, I could murder a coffee” and if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t hear the tiniest stress on the one word. So that is his idea – to blackmail Ianto, to make him think that he owes his freedom and life to Adam’s apparent knowledge and silence. He watches Adam wander back to his work station and turns away, his breath shaky. He wonders for a moment how he is going to get through the day, how he’s going to be able to hold on until Jack makes his move. Whatever it is, whenever it is, Ianto will have his back. It’s what he does. What he is.

It’s Adam’s own cruelty that decides Jack’s actions. Seeing Ianto jerk out of Adam’s reach, hearing Adam’s jibe and the look on Ianto’s face as he turns away. No, he’s not taking any more of this. Three long rapid strides carry him past Ianto and to Adam; and the Webley is in his hand and cocked and aimed at the back of Adam’s head. And no, he will _not_ think about the memory that he knows with sickening certainty is real: the memory of holding this same gun to Ianto’s head. Not right now. He keeps his eyes on Adam but on the edge of his vision he can see that the other three have frozen in shock or horror, staring at him. He can sense Ianto just behind him, hear a faint catch of breath.

“Talk to me, Adam!” he says. “If that’s even your name.” And Adam turns his chair and he _smiles_ , as though he thinks this is a joke.

“What?” he says with a laugh and now the other three are closing in slowly because they think Jack’s gone mad and he’s aware of Ianto pulling his disappear-into-the-background trick that he still does so well, melting back so they will forget he is even there. He will watch and wait and be ready to back Jack up in any way he needs. It’s what he is. What he does.

Gwen gives a soft, nervous laugh and she has that look on her face that drives Ianto quietly up the wall – what he’s dubbed her ‘now listen, sweetheart’ look, the one that says she’s already decided you’re in the wrong and she’s in the right.

“What are you doing, Jack?” she says with a nervous giggle and oh yes, that’s the tone that goes with the look – the one that says she knows best and why don’t you just be sensible and listen to her; and for the first time Jack realises just **why** the look and the voice piss Ianto off so much. Although, to be fair to Gwen, it really **must** look like he’s just gone mad.

“He’s not who you think he is,” Jack says firmly. “He’s been feeding himself into our memories, by touch.” He knows he’s going to have to convince the other three – hopefully without having to show them what Ianto has gone through.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” Tosh says, a bewildered laugh in her voice but there is fear in her eyes and this feels horribly familiar, a member of the team in love with someone that could harm or destroy them all. **Again.** Thank fuck that the best way out of this is to retcon them all, because he’s not sure how well Ianto’s sanity will cope with another pass through this particular Hell.

“He didn’t exist until two days ago,” Jack says. Gwen and Owen are pressing forward, carefully, step by step and he has to hope like hell that none of them are going to try and disarm him because he doesn’t want to hurt any of them.

“Can somebody tell me what’s going on here, please?” and Adam is still acting like he thinks this is a crazy prank, grinning and laughing and he sounds so natural that Jack would almost believe him innocent. If it wasn’t for the memory of Ianto screaming and begging; and fighting to keep himself from leaving the Hub; and switching back and forth between horrified and exulted at what his own mind was telling him.

“Jack,” says Owen and his voice is careful, calm. “We’ve known him for years. He’s part of the team.” Next to him Gwen nods, her face tight with anxiety. But that isn’t right. Because Jack can remember Tosh in that UNIT hell-hole and the look on Owen’s face at Katie’s graveside. He can remember looking up from the Weevil in Bute Park to wonder how the hell he’d ever missed spotting **this** rent-boy and the look on Gwen’s face as she carried pizzas into the Hub with Ianto pacing behind her, that faint smile on his face. And he can even remember a university lab and Suzie looking up from the half-repaired Dalek gun she’d found. But he has no idea where or why he drew Adam into Torchwood on May 7th 2005.

“No,” he says. “He just made you think that.”

“Come on Jack,” Adam says and he reaches out as though for one of his companionable touches and like Ianto moments earlier, Jack twitches back out of reach and he lifts the Webley a fraction.

“Ah-ah-ah! You don’t get to me like that,” and Adam pulls back and he knows that Jack knows.

“Jack, you know me! You recruited me three years ago!” Adam says and his tone is oh-so-reasonable. Just like it always is, because it’s Adam who can talk Jack round when Gwen can’t force him to give way. It’s Adam he can take any problem to, Adam he can confide in, Adam he talks into the night with. He knows that, he **remembers** that. But there’s that double-memory judder again, because he holds his problems close to his chest and he confides snippets of himself only and those just to Ianto or sometimes to Gwen; and it’s Ianto he talks to late at night when their separate and mutual demons won’t let them rest. The real memories are becoming clearer now, memories that fill him with warmth or grief or anger or horror; while the memories of Adam are empty and flat.

“All I know is that when I think of my team,” Jack says, and the other three are looking from one to the other of them, wide-eyed, faces taut. “I see you there, but I don’t feel anything for you. No pride, no warmth….” And he is so proud of them all – Tosh who came through Hell with her kindness intact; Owen who can never express how much he needs to **heal** everyone; Gwen who blazes with passion and Ianto, who has surpassed everything Jack ever hoped for from him. They are his, his family; and his life has warmth and meaning because of them. But there is nothing for Adam.

“You, the one who I can ‘confide’ in,” he continues. “The one who **unburied the dead** ,” he snarls out the last words through clenched teeth. He’d found a measure of peace, a settling of his past that even the idea that Hart might have been telling the truth for the first time in his life hasn’t destroyed. And then Adam had dug into his memories for his own ends and now he has to remember the day he utterly failed.

“Jack,” Gwen says, her tone making it clear she thinks she’s humouring a madman. “Maybe you’ve just forgotten him. Like I did with Rhys, yeah?”

“Oh, I should have spotted it then,” he says and really - they should have, shouldn’t they? Because however crazy their jobs are that really was a bizarrely specific bout of amnesia and you’d think, given that they deal with fucking aliens for a living, that at least **one** of them would have realised that maybe the Rift had something to do with it.

“That wasn’t stress,” he continued. “That was him. By making us think we know him, he disturbs our real memories.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Adam says and he still sounds like he thinks this is funny and god **damn** the bastard he sounds so utterly convincing. How the hell are they going to make the rest of the team see? Especially Tosh. He, Jack, hasn’t exactly got a stellar record of convincing team-mates that their loved one is a threat.

“I’m taking him to the vault!” he says, reaching out and grabbing hold of Adam’s shirt front to haul him bodily from the chair. He has no intention of touching the man himself, just in case. 

“Jack, this is ridiculous,” Adam says and he’s still stringing the others along and if he can, Jack realises, he will try to touch him. Try to remove his memory of this and of uncovering the truth. Then he may well change their memories to turn them all on Ianto and Jack doesn’t want to think about what that will do to the other man.

He keeps the gun to Adam’s head because if it doesn’t have the ability to damage him then the proof of that will itself rip Adam’s web of lies apart and pushes the deceiver ahead of him towards the stairs.

“Move!” he snarls. Then there is the familiar _click!_ of a handgun cocking.

“NO!” Tosh is holding the gun on him, her face full of love and pain and desperation and all Jack can think is _god, no, not again, please not this again_ because haven’t they been here all-fucking-ready – Ianto and Lisa, and Tosh and Mary, and now Tosh and Adam; and he can see shock on the faces of Gwen and Owen as they both call her name, clearly not knowing what to do or which way to turn, and Ianto is sheet-white behind them all. She twists, aim shifting to Owen then Gwen then Ianto for a brief moment and back to the other two. Gwen is reaching out and Owen looks terrified.

“That’s not gonna help,” Owen says, fighting to sound calm.

“It’s fine, it’s fine” Gwen says and _really? In what way and what world is any of this ‘fine’, Cooper?_ Because that hasn’t helped at all and Tosh is right on the edge so he speaks to keep her attention on him because if she’s going to shoot any of them it will have to be him.

“Toshiko?” and her gaze and her aim turn back to him, and Ianto starts to edge towards her, gaze fixed on her gun.

“I’m just going to lock him up,” Jack says, slow and calm and firm and Ianto moves closer again, using the distraction Jack is offering, his face rigid with strain. The spiteful little voice in Jack’s head, the one that sounds like the man John once knew, says _hey, if you want this to be even **more** like last time, why not order **Tosh** to lock Adam up to prove whose side she’s on? _As if Jack needed any more guilt trips about the echoes of That Night. He knows full-well that when the list of The All-Time Worst Fuck-Ups Of Javic Piotr Thane is produced some time near the end of the Universe, threatening to execute a man if he refuses to murder his own lover will be near the top of it because really, by then wasn’t Ianto damaged enough for anyone? Was there really a need to break him even more, just because he was pissed that this pretty, know-nothing **boy** from 21st century Wales had managed to con **_him_**?

“Let him go!” Tosh says.

“I’m not going to harm him,” Jack says, keeping his tone the same and the other two have their eyes fixed on Tosh and Ianto slides closer.

“Why should I believe you?” Tosh cries and her hands are shaking and the tension is ratcheting up.

“Tosh,” Owen says and he’s desperate to resolve this, to help her. “Tosh, we can talk about this.” She looks at him and the gun starts to swing his way before she registers the greater threat and returns aim to Jack and she’s about to snap and Ianto moves forward again, readying himself as his eyes flick to Owen and Gwen and then back to Tosh.

“Drop the gun, Jack!” and they all know she’s going to shoot and then Ianto moves with a speed that blindsides Tosh and he shoves the gun down, grabbing her other wrist in one hand.

Gwen shouts something but Ianto doesn’t take it in, he’s focusing on keeping the gun down and pointing **away** from the others. On any other day he’d have twisted a leg behind her foot and used his own weight to bear her down to the ground but he does **not** want to do that today and so he tightens his hold on her wrists, twisting them both round even though he really doesn’t want to hurt her, and she’s screaming at him as he gets the gun from her hand.

“Don’t! Get off me!” and then she screams Adam’s name and if they hadn’t already realised that they need to retcon Adam from existence, he’d be willing to literally beg Jack on his knees for the damn stuff. This, what has happened these last few minutes, is reminding him far too much of the night he re-lives over and over again in his nightmares. And Jack’s voice harsh with anger is yet another reminder, even though this time that rage is directed at someone else.

“This is what you’ve done to us! Move!”

Owen comes forward as Tosh twists in his grip and Ianto eases his hold and she shoves at them both, pushing them away from her as she sobs. Gwen has pulled her own gun but she’s watching wide-eyed and nervous, not aiming at any of them so hopefully this time it won’t end in a bloodbath because he thinks that will finally drive him mad.

“Adam!” Tosh is sobbing and screaming and as Jack vanishes down the stairs, Owen tries to touch her again and she pushes him away so hard he staggers back. Ianto ejects her clip onto the floor and dumps her gun onto her abandoned desk before moving towards her. She turns to him, face ugly with rage and hate, lashing out. He catches her wrist in his left hand before the slap connects, pulling her towards him and around so her back is right in front of him. Gwen hesitates, looking shocked, as she goes to holster her gun and he grabs Tosh’s shoulder in his free hand and propels her the few steps to the CCTV banks.

“Quiet!” he snaps at them all, because Tosh is sobbing and Owen is loudly disapproving of his aggressive behaviour and though Gwen’s put the gun away, she looks like she’s about to start one of her **bloody** tirades – presumably about what just happened to Adam - and he really Just. Can’t. Fucking. Deal. with it right now. He lets go of Tosh’s wrist and calls up the CCTV, aware of his hands shaking again as he does so. The various time-stamps will be burned into his brain until Jack grants him the release of Retcon.

He doesn’t watch, and he tries not to listen, as the CCTV shows what Adam did to him and shame floods through him at the knowledge that he didn’t do more to fight the man off. He remembers trying to crawl away; remembers _no, please!_ and arms around him and Adam kissing him and holding him and touching him and his mind reeling and not being able to do anything to **stop** him. He should have done more, he should have tried harder. 

By the time the CCTV shows Adam rising and walking away, leaving him cowering and sobbing on the Hub floor, Gwen has a hand clapped to her mouth and her eyes are wider than he’s ever seen them. Owen’s mouth has dropped open and he’s shaking his head, horror written all over his face. Tosh is shaking from head to foot, hands clenched together at her chest. Unable to open his mouth for fear of screaming again, Ianto reaches over Tosh’s shoulder and calls up those other little incidents. _A year ago today…you remembered_ and _Do you remember that?_ and _Just ‘cause that’s what I said to you on your first day, remember?_ And then the recording of Adam appearing from nowhere, and the way he first placed himself in each of their memories.

He turns off the recordings and there is quiet, though Tosh is sobbing softly. He puts his hand on her shoulder for a moment, trying to offer sympathy and comfort. They’ve both loved someone who put them all in danger; both been betrayed by someone they loved, both been Adam’s victims. He looks at Owen.

“Take her up to the conference room. Jack won’t be long,” he says softly, because it seems the obvious thing that Jack will want to do – to gather them together and keep them in one place while Adam’s tampering is undone. Owen nods slowly.

“Yes, yes….umm… come along Tosh, love…..let’s get you….” His voice tails off and he begins to guide Tosh towards the stairs, arm around her shoulders and the other hand gently clasping her arm.

Gwen turns to Ianto, reaching a hand out to him with That Look on her face and he steps back almost as fast as he drew back from Adam. Because while that’s the look that makes Jack wax lyrical about her humanity, he hates seeing it. It incites nothing from him but the urge to shut down, shut her out. He chooses who he lets in, and how far. Gwen assumes that she can buy her way in with nothing more than a smile. He’s beyond grateful that Jack kept her from his door during his suspension because he’s not sure he could have coped if she’d turned up with That Look on her face after helping to destroy his world. It still rankles, deep down. That she railed against Jack for letting the child Jasmine go with the fairies; and prated about how Beth deserved to be saved even as the poor bewildered woman was gathering intel to help with an invasion – yet she has never shown a flicker of remorse or regret for Lisa. The only time the word even passed her lips was when he shoved Lisa’s death in all their faces _. Ianto, I’m sorry…..Sorry she’s dead, or sorry you mentioned it?....I just didn’t think…..You forgot….._ Jack had begun to rip into him verbally after Gwen fled with her tail between her legs – until Tosh had turned around and shocked them both by laying into Jack in turn. Just how that would have played out no-one ever found out, because before Jack could reply the other two had come tearing back to let them know about the body.

Her mouth opens and he knows she’s about to call him sweetheart and he **hates** it when she does that. God, did Lisa hate it when he called her that?

“Ianto, sweet…”

“Why don’t you go with them?” he cuts in. “I’m sure Tosh could do with some company.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Start deleting the evidence.”

“What? Why?”

He manages not to roll his eyes but he has to bite his lip to stop the first response that tries to come out. _Why do you bloody **think** , Cooper?_

“We have to forget,” he says instead. _Like I’m remembering a man who doesn’t exist_ and Adam’s hand flickering in and out of reality.

“Is that what Jack thinks?” And there’s that note in her voice: the one that means she thinks he’s taking on authority she doesn’t believe he has, stepping outside what **she** thinks his job involves. Not that she has ever grasped the full extent of what his job is. Not before his suspension, and certainly not now. None of the three of them do, on Jack’s orders. _They can’t know. They wouldn’t understand, Ianto_. Gwen starts to turn towards the stairs.

“I’ll just go down and ask Jack what he wants m..us to do.”

“Gwen,” Ianto tries to keep himself calm, tries to remind himself that Gwen is also a victim and that she has also suffered as a direct result of Adam’s manipulations. To forget Rhys and have them all telling her that he was her fiancé must have been terrifying. But that doesn’t cover why she always seems to feel the need to double-check every **fucking** thing he tells her. A sodding year with Torchwood and she thinks she’s the expert. It was the same even before he let her think she was leading the team while Jack away. _That’s not right. Adam led us while Jack was…. **NO**. No, that’s fake. Christ Jack – bloody hurry up will you? _

“Jack and I realised that if…” He glances towards the stairs, checking that Owen and Tosh are out of sight and hearing. “If Adam needs to put himself **into** our memories to exist, then if we remove him **from** our memories, we’ll get rid of him. And the quicker the better, so we lose as little time as possible.”

“Oh,” she says and shifts from foot to foot. Then:- “You mean retcon.”

“Unless you know some other method?” and there’s more of a snap to his words than he meant there to be but right now he’s struggling to keep the usual imperturbable mask in place. He takes a deep breath, reminding himself again that she’s also under stress and that she never means actual harm. _Doesn’t stop her fucking doing it though._

“Well, what about me? I’m immune to retcon.”

 _Deep breaths, Ianto. Deep breaths._ “Gwen, you shook off one dose of a very specific variation – and I doubt you’d have successfully done that if Cos….. if Suzie hadn’t cracked and waved that glove in your face.” She looks shocked. Has he just shattered some sort of ‘I’m special I am’ idea she had? “All Jack was trying to do was wipe **us** from your memory.” If he’s honest with himself, he’s not even sure Jack was trying very hard. Level 1 retcon is not the usual variety for deleting memories of Torchwood, and he’d had his suspicions of Jack’s plans for PC Cooper at the time. But he had other far more pressing things on his mind at the time even before Costello went and triggered Gwen’s memories before blowing her brains out right in front of the woman. Two doses of retcon one on top of each other can have nasty side-effects, so Jack had a convenient excuse for bringing her on-board. He’s never been quite sure why Jack hasn’t caught one of the many lures Gwen has thrown his way. He’s fairly sure that Jack won’t, not now, but he’d dreading the upcoming wedding.

“This time we’ll be deleting entire time-frames, not just memory threads. You won’t break it this time. Trust me – it’s my job.” He closes his mouth firmly on the word _remember_. She’s staring at him with the same kind of blank look she gives Tosh or Owen when they’re being technical and he clamps down on the irritation. She never does bother with those parts of Torchwood’s work that don’t interest her - and quite how he pulls off their cover-ups has never interested her, save when she tries to pretend moral superiority because she isn’t involved in them. 

“I’m going to make sure we don’t have any reminders,” he says. “Why don’t you go and see how Tosh is?”

She catches her breath. “Oh God – Tosh. She must feel….” She swallows and suddenly he sees the cop, the female cop who must have dealt with so many rape victims; and for all his problems with her, he can see that she was probably very capable. She nods and turns away without another word and as she hurries up the stairs, Ianto realises that they’re going to have to say something to Rhys. Your fiancée waving a knife at you and not remembering your name is not something you’re going to forget to ask her about. Should he call Rhys in, retcon him? Deciding to leave Jack to make that call, he kills the live CCTV recording, setting it to start again at nine, then begins work.

There are too many images of Adam to remove only them – even with his skills at this, a geriatric would be able to spot the gaping holes it would leave. They’re going to have to delete everything, so he begins to move the last 48 hours into a different part of the server, checking it for information that might have to somehow be saved as he does. Fortunately, Sunday apparently had been fairly quiet (which agrees with his memories) and Owen left just after two (which he also remembers) and Tosh left alone shortly before three. His memory tells him she left with Adam as she always does, so at least the CCTV reveals Adam only spent one night in Tosh’s bed, not two. He doesn’t suppose telling her that is going to make her feel any happier about having been essentially raped.

For himself, it turns out he went home at four – which he remembers doing, although watching himself leave without a backward glance or a last visit to Jack’s office seems…strange, somehow. Jack and Adam look to have talked the night through. The CCTV shows them sitting next to each other on the sofa, Adam frequently touching Jack’s shoulder or leg and he wonders grimly how many of Jack’s memories Adam adjusted.

He works his way through the other files, removing every trace of Adam and as much as he can of the last two days. Finally, he pulls up the live feed from the vaults. Jack is just outside the cell he put Adam in, standing close to the clear door and glaring in at the prisoner.

“All those extraordinary memories you hold,” Adam is saying. “Some hidden, some absent.” And Ianto realises that there are parts of Jack that he does not know but that Adam is fully aware of. Things Jack has shared with Adam that he will never share with Ianto and for a moment he feels a flicker of anger towards Jack. Then he feels ashamed – the sharing of some of those memories was tricked from him, just as Tosh’s love was; and the sharing of others was as forced onto the other man as his own memories were forced onto him.

Jack has turned to leave, he realises, and Adam throws a last taunt after him.

“You always remember what you killed. Don’t you, _Jack_?” And as Jack freezes for a moment, Adam’s gaze flicks up to the camera and it’s as though he’s looking right into Ianto’s eyes.


	4. Tuesday Morning, 8 a.m.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Memories shift, and Jack reflects on what he knows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's taken this long - 4 kids and a husband at home on lockdown REALLY don't lend to writing time!
> 
> Firstly - again, if you recognise dialogue (or remembered dialogue) it's from the show, not me. 
> 
> Secondly - remember how I said this was a slight AU? THIS is where the AU bit comes in. I just had this idea for one small scene between Jack and Ianto which made the whole false-memory thing a little.... different. It's not how I normally see Ianto, but on the other hand....

Tuesday Morning, 8 a.m.

Jack slams the door to the vaults behind him and stands still for a moment, drawing in a long breath. _You have to put me in the vaults. Lock me up._ Ice trails up his spine for a moment at the thought that had things played out just a little differently, it would be Ianto he was leaving in the vaults. If he had listened to Ianto rather than to his own gut feeling, his own knowledge of the man. God, what if Ianto’s self-control had snapped and he had actually left the Hub, with the certain belief he was a murderer…

And if it was Ianto in the vaults right now, what would Adam have done next? Would he have planted suspicions in their minds, so that they assumed Ianto’s guilt? Would he have pretended concern for Ianto? Begged to see him, to speak to him - only to deliberately tear his mind still further apart with the ‘memories’ of more murders? For a moment, he stays in the CCTV blind spot just outside the vaults, face in his hands as he tries to block out the image of ‘what if’ that come to mind.

The sick feeling had been made even worse by Adam’s self-justification. If he had though the man was simply mistaken – that he had merely been trying to feed and the resultant loss of memories had been an accidental side-effect – he might have looked at trying to help him. But for the man to claim that he didn’t mean any harm after what Jack had seen him to do Ianto….. _I forgot what a rush it is, feeding in the bad stuff._ And then to claim that he’d changed them for the better…… He is regaining memories now, of Owen’s vicious temper and Tosh’s self-doubts. And while Tosh is, on the surface, a happier person there is still the fact that she has lost part of herself. And Owen is a different man – contrary to Adam's claim, this Owen is an unhappy man, anxious and tense with none of his usual surety in his skills. The very idea of this Owen in the field is an alarming one.

A small part of him asks quietly whether he would be this determined to stop Adam if he had not attacked Ianto. He hesitates for a moment, thinking. _Yes._ Because it’s not just the attack on Ianto that shows Adam to be an active threat rather than someone struggling to survive. He has used Tosh – whether for gratification or to embed himself further into the team, he has stripped away her ability to consent. Adam has raped two of his team. He has placed himself beyond the pale, and Jack has no qualms at all about what he is about to do. Adam will not leave the Hub alive.

He makes for the stairs, the plan firming in his mind. Gather them together – though Ianto almost certainly has that under control. The fact that none of them have tried to call him over the comm, that Gwen hasn’t come barrelling down here raging at his actions, tell him that Ianto has at the least convinced them that Adam is up to something. But that most likely means he has shown them what Adam did to him. More reasons for retcon, because Tosh does not deserve to remember this, and Ianto will not want the others to remember watching him come apart under Adam’s vicious assault. 

He climbs up from the vaults and Ianto is waiting for him by the CCTV station, head down, one hand on his hip and the other running through his hair in the familiar nervous gesture. He glances up.

“They’re in there,” he says, gesturing up towards the conference room. “They’ve seen the… the CCTV. Tosh is…upset.” Jack nods, walking over to join him.

“Did he say anything?” Ianto continues and Jack knows from his tone that he saw at least some of their interaction.

“Nothing you want to hear.”

“I’ve isolated the last two days of CCTV recordings for deletion,” Ianto says in a matter-of-fact voice. His level of self-control is alarming at times, which is why it is all the more shocking when it does break. 

“It’ll start recording again at nine. The entry and exit and computer system logs have been wiped, I’ve removed the personnel file and deleted the admin logs to hide that the file was ever there. No-one was injured, so no medical supplies to account for. I’ve checked Owen’s medical updates, but there’s nothing about Adam in there, just the confirmation that the Keldora was safe to release and recordings from the hothouse so I left them alone. I’ve checked Tosh’s systems as well – nothing there that relates to Adam and I daren’t wind any of her scans back… no idea how! Nothing in my diary…” He holds it up with a grim smile. “But your personal log might need adjusting.” He rubs one hand over his face. “What about Rhys?”

“I’ll speak to him,” Jack says. “But Adam never spoke to him or touched him.”

“That you remember,” Ianto says and Jack swallows. Because Ianto’s right – how much of the last two days can he rely on? How much happened as he thinks it did?

“Jack?” Ianto’s voice cracks and when Jack looks at him, Ianto is clearly fighting to stay calm. “Are we ready to use the retcon?” He’s near the ragged edge and its little wonder after the night he’s had. Jack steps closer still, takes the diary from his hands and puts it to one side, then draws him into an embrace. Once again, despite the implanted memories that tell him it is Adam who means the most to him, it feels **right** to have Ianto in his arms. Sunday night, it seems, is not the only night they have spent together.

“Yes,” he says and Ianto gives a sigh of relief, his head dropping for a moment onto Jack’s shoulder.

“How…” he says and Jack hears him swallow hard. He pulls back far enough to look Jack in the eye. “How did you know the memories he... How did you know they were wrong?”

Jack smiles, cups Ianto’s face in his hands. “I know you,” he says simply. “You’d never have murdered an innocent woman. You’d never strangle anyone.” He kisses him, then changes what he was going to say, because _You never hide a kill from me_ seems a cruel thing to say under the circumstances. So would pointing out that, despite the memory Adam forced into his head, Ianto never needs any more help hiding the bodies than he does covering up the deaths Torchwood couldn’t prevent. 

“You don’t hide yourself from me anymore,” he says instead.

“I needed to tell you. I knew you’d stop me from…”

Jack starts to put a finger to Ianto’s lips but the other man stiffens and pulls away, eyes suddenly frantic and Jack realises he **really** doesn’t want to know why. So he lets one hand slide to Ianto’s shoulder and runs the forefinger of the other hand along his jaw and down his neck instead, shaking his head.

“There’s nothing you’ve done I need to stop. I know that. And I trust you. Now…” He smiles. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” The word is out almost before Jack has finished asking the question and for a moment, they stare at each other, each aware of a memory hovering just out of reach before Jack puts it aside for later.

“Good. Go to the conference room. Tell the others I’ll be there in a moment.”

Ianto nods and turns away, climbing the steps leadenly. About to head for his office, Jack spots the diary sitting by the CCTV monitors and picks it up. He keeps a small supply of retcon in his safe, for the rare occasions when he does not want Owen to be able to track how much of it has been used. He puts Ianto’s diary on the desk and unlocks the safe before reaching to the tiny keypad built into the back of the safe. One of the few passcodes in this place that he is (reasonably) certain Ianto does not know. The small door pops open and he takes out the correct bottle, removing four tablets. He’ll call Rhys later, after the other four are under. This dosage will knock them out for a few hours, so he’ll have a small window of time for his own clean-up, but there’s no reason to let Ianto and Tosh suffer any longer.

By the time he arrives in the conference room, they are all sitting at the table. There are five glasses of water on the table, each on a coaster along the inlay and he gives Ianto a small smile as he places the little group of pills on the end of the table. _My ever-efficient Ianto._

“You’ve all seen what’s been happening,” he says. Gwen bites her lip, glances from Tosh to Ianto and then down at her hands, folded on the table-top. Owen frowns, fiddling with his glasses and looking embarrassed. Tosh looks at him, glances at Ianto then back to Jack. There are tear-tracks on her face and she looks a mess. _My poor Toshiko._

“I… I don’t understand,” she says softly. “I don’t understand why he would do this! Let me talk to him - he’s Adam for heaven’s sake! He’s not a monster.” Ianto flinches and Jack can hear the echo of words from so many months ago. _Let me talk to her. I can still save her….. She’s not a monster._

“You saw what he did, Toshiko.” Jack says. “He’s not human. He’s not doing this just to survive. He’s doing it for his own pleasure.” Ianto closes his eyes, exhaling with a shudder. Jack heads towards the screen at the back of the room, letting one hand trail across Ianto’s shoulders and back as he passes behind him. He sees Gwen’s eyes widen slightly in surprise.

“He played with our memories,” Jack continues. “Played with what kind of people we are.” He calls up the live CCTV recording of the cells onto the main screen. Tosh stares at it, eyes wide and face holding such pain that it makes Jack’s own heart ache. Gwen and Owen look from the screen to Tosh to Jack – unsure but distinctly uncomfortable. Ianto glances once at the screen and then away, staring straight ahead.

“Our memories define us,” Jack says, echoing his own earlier thoughts. “Adam changed those memories. Changed who we are.” He starts to walk down the length of the table again. “Now I have to help you all go back, find a memory that defines you. Rediscover who you are. If I’m wrong, he’ll still be here when we’ve done this.” He drops the live feed and sets up a low-level hypnotic pattern on the screen. Just enough to help with what is effectively meditation.

“Let me take you back to before we all met…” He dims the lights. “Feel around for anything that makes you what you are…the hidden and the forgotten.” This, too, will be lost to retcon soon, which is perhaps for the best, as whatever emerges will be deeply personal. And will have nothing to do with Adam.

“Tell me where you are,” he says softly. He’s watching their faces, but he’s also paying attention to other senses. He’s not telepathic as such but the best part of 3000 years of inter-mingling with other species changes all kinds of base-lines. Unlike his other senses he has to concentrate to use this – which is why he never picked up on the three people who have suffered the most inside this place. Even after Suzie, he didn’t bother to stop and see if anyone else was suffering – too caught up in the fun of a new team member. _Jackie-boy’s got a new toy_ …Suzie’s words, when he told them he’d hired a survivor of the Battle, but as applicable to Gwen as they had been then. He’d been too busy having fun watching Gwen’s reactions to everything she was seeing to see what was happening right in front of him. _Like you care! I clean up your shit, no questions asked and that’s the way you like it._

It took far too many deaths but he did finally start paying some attention, which was why he realised something was up with Tosh in time. 

Standing in the conference room he listens, and he feels and at first, there’s nothing. Then…. Amusement. From Gwen. And fondness. Her mouth twitches in a smile, her eyes – though unfocused - softening with the affection he can sense. Then her smile widens and she breaks out in a quick laugh. Even as she laughs, there is a wash of pain – old, old pain. Owen. And something else – he feels betrayed. Jack glances over and sees a flicker of something dark in Owen’s face before the man speaks softly. There’s bitterness there.

“I love you because you’re my son.” The rest of the thought is unsaid but from the way his mouth tightens and the hurt in his eyes Jack can tell the words do not come from a happy memory. He knows little of Owen’s childhood - none of them, save Gwen, share much of themselves - but he knows Owen hasn’t spoken to his mother in years. She never met Katie and wasn’t at the sham funeral.

Tosh gives a small but happy smile. There’s a feeling of affection but it’s different to Gwen’s – affection for a.. thought, or a concept rather than a person.

“Something so reliable about maths.” _Ah._ Then the smile fades. His poor Tosh. She has so much to give, and so few people can see it. Did Adam see that? Exploit it?

There is a wash of… joy, pure and simple, all too soon tempered by regret.

“Falling in love….” He turns at Ianto’s voice. Lisa. If the soft smile on Ianto’s face had left Jack in any doubt after that feeling of joy, the wave of sorrow that follows would have removed it. He has to look away as Ianto’s smile fades, to be replaced by pain.

There are only two photos of Lisa in Ianto’s flat. He knows from the occasional comments Ianto has made over late-night glasses of whisky that he has almost nothing left of their life before. The Committee that was hurriedly put in place after that day decided, without ever informing Jack, to limit pensions and medical pay-offs to only those survivors who underwent a full physical and psychological assessment within two weeks of the Battle. They also decided – entirely as a cost-cutting measure - that death-in-service payments were only to be made where the bodies were in UNIT morgues. Ianto had been in Cardiff, Lisa hidden on an empty industrial estate, five days after the Battle and had no way of leaving her long enough to satisfy the Committee’s demands for medical appointments. The result was that by the time he first entered the Hub he was virtually penniless. He admitted once that the only times he’d eaten from then until being paid nearly a month later had been when the team ordered food. All their money – their shared account, their credit cards, their savings – had gone on keeping Lisa alive while he got them into the Hub and worked out how to steal what they needed from the Hub’s supplies without being discovered. Left with a seemingly abandoned flat – Ianto had more important things to worry about - their landlord had sold or destroyed everything left behind after Ianto’s one brief visit to gather essentials. The two photos that remain exist only because he snatched them up to give them both a reminder of life before the Battle.

One picture, apparently, was taken at Lisa’s Gran’s 90th birthday party. Ianto is sitting on a garden bench, Lisa sitting sideways on his lap. One of his arms is around her back, the other over her legs as a bottle dangles from his hand. She has one arm around his shoulder, the other hand resting on his knee. They are smiling at the camera – just another young couple on a warm summer’s day. The other photo is of Lisa alone, slim and straight in an ivory bridesmaid’s dress with peacock-blue embroidery climbing the skirt. The last fitting, Ianto told him once, made three days before the Battle for her best friend’s wedding. He arrived at the shop early to collect her for a trip to the Eye and she asked him to take the photo. A Torchwood wedding, booked for two weeks after the Battle. Bride, groom, best man and both bridesmaids, all victims of Daleks or Cybermen. The woman in the photos is beautiful – laughing and vibrant in the first image; elegant and alluring in the second. They and his memories are all Ianto has of her.

Jack looks away from Ianto, towards the others.

The sense of betrayal and the bitterness from Owen is almost enough to make him gasp.

“That,” Owen says, “is the nicest thing you’ve done for me in years, Mother.” Jack can remember all-too-clearly the look on his own mother’s face after Grey. Owen’s anger has kept him going since Katie’s death – but he has never before realised how far back that anger goes. He wonders what Owen would have been like had Katie not fallen victim to an alien parasite.

Gwen stirs and he looks her way, glad to feel her ready affection. He knows it’s not for him, but it’s a balm after Owen’s anger and Ianto’s pain.

“The look on his face…” There is a wondering note in her voice, as though she can’t quite believe what is in her mind. ‘His’, and the feeling of wonder he can sense surely means she is thinking Rhys and despite himself, Jack feels the usual flicker of impatience. What on earth is it she sees in the man? Rhys is so….. normal. Every-day. **Boring**. How can he compare to Torchwood?

 _Oh, you’re not jealous at all are you?_ That small voice in his brain, the one that sometimes sounds like Rose, sounds exasperated. _You know what your problem is? You want her attention all to yourself._ _You tell her not to let her normal life go – and then you deliberately try and hold her so tightly that she can’t do exactly that. You know you’re confusing her don’t you?_ He tries to shrug the voice off. He wants her to have someone outside Torchwood, of course he does. He just doesn’t understand why it has to be someone like Rhys ‘boringly normal’ Williams.

_It’s **because** he’s so normal. He grounds her. You say you want her here to help you all remember what it is you’re fighting for? Then she needs him – and you need to let her **have** him, not keep pulling her deeper and deeper into the dark just to have her company. You keep doing that and you’ll break **her** as well. _

He doesn’t look at Ianto.

From Tosh there is….. regret. A hollow feeling.

“I don’t have a flat-warming.” She sounds tired, defeated – mind, voice and face all saying the same thing and he feels guilt and pity. When her time is up, he will do all he can to persuade her to leave Torchwood. Bringing her into the Hub saved her from the UNIT hell, but she needs to get out into the light – she needs to grow. Being in the UNIT prison was killing her more each day, but being here is deadening her, inch by inch.

And then there is a wave of pain and grief, loss and guilt – a surge so strong that for a moment he loses awareness of where he is, struggling to remain standing. Struggling to hold on to **anything** else. Oh God, he thought Ianto had begun to move onward. The idea that this is how Ianto feels **after** he has begun to heal makes him feel almost sick. Surely not – surely he would have realised? He has told them to reach inside themselves, to find what makes them themselves, is that why these feelings are so strong? Even he has been painfully aware of the memory of Lisa since the moment he put a gun to Adam’s head. He should have thought, he should have taken a different course of action. He never thinks, just goes in all guns blazing – and yet again he has hurt someone he loves because of it.

 _Loves?_ He doesn’t have time to think about the word that came through his head.

“Like the world had ended.” There is nothing but pain in Ianto’s voice. Jack makes himself look at the bewildered, lost look in his eyes. Guilt twists inside him. Until that year Jack tries to forget, he was rock-solid in his certainty that Lisa never left Canary Wharf alive. He had been sure that all that remained of her was memories – memories abused by the Cyberman who controlled her body to manipulate her lover. He’d been (illogically, unjustly, unfairly, stupidly) furious with Ianto for not being able to see what he thought was so clear. Even after the end, he had told himself that her last actions were the result of some sort of corruption of the implants in her brain.

Then, while explaining to the Doctor why he had taken on the leadership of Torchwood Three, he had mentioned Yvonne Hartman – with some bitterness. _Very strong-willed woman,_ the Doctor had said in a tone of grudging admiration. _You don’t often meet someone who can throw off the cyber-programming._ With a growing sense of dread, he had asked what the Doctor meant - and learned about the Cyberman who still believed in “Queen and country”. Since then, he has tried very hard **not** to ask himself just when Lisa Hallet truly died. In the conversion chamber during the Battle? At some point during that long, hellish journey from the twentieth floor to the bunker beneath the Plass? Or at some moment during that last horrific night? He does not know – but he does know he will never let Ianto see his doubts. Could they have saved her? He still thinks probably not - but the fact remains that he never truly tried, and that is something he can never undo.

He looks away before his heart breaks just that little fraction more. Gwen is staring ahead and he can feel something like awe coming from her for a moment, her mouth opening a little just before she speaks.

“I love him,” Gwen says. He knows, deep down, what she is about to say and shifts his gaze away a moment before she says the words. “But not in the way I love you.”

He meets her gaze. He’s known from the first that she was taken with him but what’s never been clear is how much of her attraction is for him personally and how much of it is the lure of the unknown – of Torchwood. It’s one of the reasons he’s never responded to the lures she throws out. The other reason is that while he thinks Rhys is the most boring man alive, Gwen and Rhys are lovers. And whatever others may think, he **does** get the whole idea of monogamy. He doesn’t see it as essential, himself – but lovers should only play the field if the other(s) are happy with it. And he’s pretty damn certain Rhys would not be. That Gwen ignored that fact to sleep with Owen and would clearly ignore it again if Jack so much as beckoned to her makes him uneasy. Deceit isn’t a good basis for any relationship. Sex shouldn’t be deceitful or selfish, it should be fun.

As to if it’s him or Torchwood she wants - when the Time Agency promoted him as The Face of Boe, the resultant fame had brought rewards in the form of multiple humans and aliens of various genders (and none) happy to fall into his bed, or bring him to theirs. It had been fun while it lasted, but after a while (a looooong while if he’s honest with himself, and when it comes to sex he is) the allure had worn off. He likes being **liked** – for himself, not for his fame or for the excitement of sleeping with whatever-it-is the other being(s) see him as. Oh, he’ll use the fame, the allure, if need be. He always has - it’s a useful tool in a con. Which is part of the reason he was so angry when it turned out Ianto had been doing exactly that – using the lure of himself as part of the con. He hadn’t seen that he was being played in the same way as he’d once played others, and it hurt the remnants of his conman’s pride.

Now, he’ll use that same tool if he has to in order to get the job done. He’s flirted with whole swathes of the galaxy to disarm, confuse, disorientate or even to anger – whatever it takes. Flirting or threatening tends to resolve a large number of (non-Weevil) issues they face and he’ll go further than just flirting if the situation calls for it. But when it comes to lovers, he prefers it if his partner(s) wants him for **him** , rather than wanting him because he’s dramatic, or an alien-hunter, or famous. He wants them to **accept** him for him.

He wants Gwen’s attention, yes he’ll admit that. It’s flattering, and he knows there’s a touch of the narcissist in him. But he wants it for **him** – Jack Harkness the man, not “Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood”. And deep down, he knows Gwen cannot accept (and doesn’t want) that man - because whenever she gets a glimpse of him beneath or behind ‘the Captain’, she either runs a mile or tries to pretend she didn’t see it. He remembers her words the day after Lisa’s final end. _You’d never have shot him, not really._ Yes, he would. Though his demand was horrendously cruel and unfair, though he knows he should never had given it and would not again if he had the same choice, had Ianto actually tried to save Lisa in those last moments, he would have killed him. He knows it. **Ianto** knows it, even referenced it tonight - _I knew I could trust you to do what was necessary_. Gwen cannot, will not, cope with the real him. He knows that. Carys, Lisa, Ianto, Jasmine. Suzie. Mark Lynch. Rhys and Abbadon, Beth, Tommy. Some of those decisions Gwen likes to pretend he was forced into with no choice (Suzie, Tommy), others (like Jasmine) she still blames him for, determined that there “must have been another way” without bothering to try and think of one herself.

He scoops up the pills, flicking one into his fingers and holds it out to Gwen as he moves to her.

“Take this.” She accepts it, though she’s not completely happy about it. He’s not budging on this one though. She will take the retcon. Willingly if possible, forcibly and with a termination of her position if not. Adam will not leave the Hub alive. He won’t allow it. As he moves behind her, he puts a hand to Gwen’s shoulder and runs the other hand along her jawline, keeping contact as long as possible. He knows, in the part of his mind that rails at the 21st century, that it’s these very gestures that feed into Gwen’s fascination with him, because she reads into them what she would put behind them. But they are part of him – he needs **touch** to truly connect. He needed it even before the Game Station but since then it has become even more essential to him. Buildings change, cities grow, friends and lovers grow old and die and his memories of how things **look** can’t always fix them in his mind. A thousand years from now he will not remember what Roald Dahl Plass looked like – he can hardly remember what this area looked he first arrived in Cardiff, a little over 100 years ago. But he remembers the smell of the docks and the sound of men working and the waves lapping against the ships. And he can remember the feel of wood, and rope, and tar under his fingers and the feeling on his skin of salt water. So he touches his team – hands, shoulders, faces and sometimes other places - and he will remember, he hopes, the way they all sound and smell and **feel.**

There are tear-tracks on Tosh’s face and he can feel her ache of loneliness – her feeling of invisibility. When she speaks, her voice is strained.

“Waiting for someone to see it,” and he knows she is talking about herself. He puts his hand on her shoulder, trying to project how much pride he has in her, how much he loves her.

“I saw it,” he says. Oh, he did. He saw it in the sheet of charges those idiots in UNIT were holding her on. He saw it in every line of the UNIT account, he saw it in her face when she first looked at him. How special she is, how amazing. How brilliant, and how much potential there was in her. She will save the world one day, he knows it.

Her eyes, wet with tears, meet his and for a moment she seems to believe in what he sees. He places the pill in front of her with a mixture of guilt and relief. He does not want to take anything from her, but she has been tricked and coerced and Adam is too dangerous. She looks at the pill as he runs one caressing hand over her shoulder and then passes around the end of the table. Owen is glaring at nothing, the look he gets when he feels that he has failed. It doesn’t take being able to sense his desperation to know what he is thinking of. He and Ianto have far more in common than they will ever admit to each other. Owen’s anger that night had been because Ianto had had hope, however false, and he was jealous of that. After it was over he had come to Jack to plead, as he thought, for Ianto’s life. _He didn’t do anything I’d not have done Jack, if I’d had the fucking chance. I’d have seen every member of that surgical team die if I thought it’d save her – and they were my friends. There’s not one of us hasn’t treated that poor bastard like part of the fucking furniture. Why should he have bloody well spared us a moment’s thought?_

“Who’ll save me?” There’s more despair than anger in his voice. Adam’s fake memories fracture and fall away and Jack recalls the real Owen. He has been on borrowed time since Katie died, his behaviour self-destructive even after Jack’s threat of recon stopped him drinking himself into an early grave. Sex and bar-brawls replaced the drinking, and things only got worse after Diane left. Things seem to have improved while Jack was away but he’s still abrasive on a good day.

“I will,” Jack says, putting a hand on Owen’s shoulder as he puts the retcon in front of him. Perhaps he can persuade Owen to let himself be saved.

From Ianto there is a sense of…. Jack can’t quite find the words even in his own mind. The Hub, and Cardiff and …

“It gave me meaning again,” Ianto says, and there is surprise in his voice. Jack moves towards him just as Ianto shifts to look up and back at him.

“You,” he says in a tone of wonder and oh god the look in his eyes….

The last of Adam’s creations crack and tear and crumble into dust and he can see realisation flood into Ianto’s own memory. Everything Adam has taken from them, every memory he buried to place himself in their minds; every memory that his fabrications pushed out or away. Every detail, every moment between them comes crashing back to them both.

It would take years to find the words to describe what emotions those memories bring with them. Jack wants nothing more than to hold him and shut the world out while they revisit those memories. Instead, he tries to put what he feels into his hands and eyes as he runs one hand over Ianto’s hair, stroking down the back of his head and leans forward to press a kiss to his forehead. Ianto’s eyes slide closed as he does so and he can hear the other man exhale on a shuddering breath. He puts the pill down close to Ianto’s hand even as he curls the fingers of the other hand behind Ianto’s neck. Before he moves away, he brings his empty hand up and lets his fingers caress Ianto’s jaw, trying to put everything he feels into the gesture. As Jack moves around behind the chair, he raises his voice, speaking to them all but as aware of Ianto as he is of his own body.

“You each have a short-term amnesia pill,” he says. He can hear Ianto swallow hard, hear the man take a deep breath. “It’ll make you forget Adam.” He stands at the head of the table and looks to Ianto even as he continues to talk to them all.

“We have to wipe out the last forty-eight hours from our memories. Go back to who we were.” He glances at the others now. Gwen looks a little apprehensive, Owen looks unhappy but Tosh…. Tosh looks devastated. He can hear Adam’s self-justifying excuses and gives a moment to wonder exactly what he is forcing Tosh and Owen to lose. But the speed with which Ianto snatches up the pill reminds him harshly of how dangerous Adam is to them. Ianto slips the pill into his mouth with a shaking hand and grabs the glass, gulping down several mouthfuls of water before putting the glass back down.

Gwen glares at Jack for a moment as she takes the pill, her gestures sharp as she takes up the glass and drinks. He’s puzzled for a moment, then realisation strikes. She just told him that she loves him, even while she loves Rhys – and his reaction was to walk away and kiss Ianto.

Tosh and Owen look at each other for a moment before he gives her a faint smile and takes the pill, removing his glasses in preparation for the drugged sleep that Ianto is already sliding into. He leans his chin on his hands and meets her eyes before giving her another smile. The interplay between them makes Jack ache inside. He knows loving Ianto (and those renewed memories make him know he loves the other man, and relieved that he has managed to express at least **something** of how he feels) will, in the end, bring heartache. But the pain, even though he already dreads it, will be a price worth paying to have Ianto’s love in return. It’s something he will have to weigh up time and again in the future and he wants desperately to find that the joy will at least sometimes outweigh the pain. He hopes Owen and Tosh figure out in time that the same can be true for them.

As though to prove him wrong, she surges to her feet and snatches at the CCTV control. A moment later and Adam is on the screen, clearly in pain in the empty cell.

“I’m going to lose so much!” she says.

“None of it was real,” Jack tells her as gently as he can, but he knows that to Tosh that will sound like a lie. Her feelings are real to her, even though they have been tricked from her. Ianto and Gwen are asleep now and Owen’s eyes are closing. Tosh has not yet taken the retcon and it is her memories and Jack’s that are keeping Adam alive, but a glance at the CCTV shows that he is struggling to stay on his feet.

“He loved me!” Tosh says and she turns to glare at Jack, tears in her eyes. “And I loved him! It…It’s no different from real memory!” She is sobbing now, face twisted in grief and why does he always have to break their hearts? He reaches out, cupping her face in one hand.

“He forced it on you,” he says firmly. He has no desire to be so brutal, but she has to understand. She loved Adam, but that response was forced from her. He had no love for her – he simply wanted to be more embedded in the team. And deeper than that – not only did he force her to love him, he used that to force his way into her bed.

She gasps and sobs, tears pouring down her face and he feels more the brute than Adam.

“You have to let it go,” he says and he can hear the pleading in his voice. He will make her take the retcon if need be, but even though neither of them will remember these moments he still wants to persuade her to take the pill of her own choice.

She turns to stare at the screen, then turns back to him as he picks up the pill and drops it back into her hand. She stares at it for a moment but at the core, she is logical. Nothing they have done here should have affected Adam if her memories were true and he sees her shoulders sag as the truth sinks home.

She takes the pill.

“Good-bye, Adam,” she whispers moments later as she lowers her head to her hands.

Exhausted by the trauma and the upheaval, she is asleep in seconds. Owen is fully under, head pillowed on his hands. Ianto is slumped in his seat, chin on his chest and peaceful for the first time in hours but Gwen starts to fall forward and Jack darts nearer, catching her head in his hands to lower her gently until she rests against the table.

He stops outside the conference room door and takes a deep breath. He needs to delete his own records. He must leave no trace of Adam but he also needs to ensure that when he wakes up from the retcon he will know not to go digging for answers. He should also take what positives he can from this and leave himself hints about Tosh needing to come out of her shell, and Owen needing to find peace. He needs to deal with Rhys, to make sure he cannot remember Gwen’s strange denial of them. After all that, he needs to go back down to Adam and sees for himself the proof that their plan is working.

But first, he takes a moment to be relieved that Adam’s plan failed. He came terrifyingly close to success and Jack draws both hands slowly over his face, hearing his own shaking breath. Had he tried a different method of controlling Ianto, it might have worked. _I forgot what a rush it is, feeding in the bad stuff._ Hoist by his own petard, then. He had wanted to force horrific memories onto Ianto for his own pleasure… and as a result, had unwittingly handed to Jack the very cause of his own end. Because those memories, once Jack heard them, were impossible to believe.

He meant what he said. He knows Ianto. Knows what he would never do, and knows what he can and will do now his loyalty is Jack’s to command. The love that came with it, that he never imagined he would return, is an undreamed-of bonus.

Adam failed because Ianto never kills unless Jack gives him the order. Ianto never kills with his hands. He never needs help to dump a body. There’s never a shred of either remorse or arousal about his actions - he has no interest in the act of killing, no urge to kill. He is simply as efficient a killer as he is in everything else he turns his hand to. Which is one reason why Jack is very careful about using him to end those problems that cannot be dealt with any other way. Because once Jack has told him to kill nothing will stop him. Five times so far, he has told the rest of the team not to bother about a case any longer - and then sent Ianto out to end it silently and permanently. Each time, his order is carried out without hesitation or question. Three aliens, two humans – all vanished without trace, never to be found. With nothing at all to tie their disappearances to Torchwood. 

He isn’t a murderer. He is a tool, Jack’s weapon of last resort. The one that Owen will not be, that Tosh cannot be, and that Gwen would never understand is needed.

He is what Jack has made him.


End file.
